It Just Means ‘Horizon’: New Skyrim Pics

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You’ll have seen some of these before in our recent Skyrim articles, but only all small and not in such a way that you could print them out and put them on a t-shirt. So here are the ten most recent Skyrim shots, which, like a penis, will get bigger if you click on them.

I was just browsing reddit in an article about reasons to stop playing an RPG (one of those dumb comedy pie charts). A user called ‘Randometymology’ or something similar had made a list of the literal meanings of a bunch or RPG titles. So the last thing I read before I skip across to here and see this as the latrst story’s headline was the meaning of ‘Oblivion’. That’s. Odd.

Any words on the official PC requirements? I find it weird that we haven’t got official word on it so close to release. For Rage Bethesda had the info released about a month prior to launch (not that it helped much…).

I know that I can find fairly accurate “expected requirements” but official announcement would be nice.

It makes me wonder if that means it currently ‘runs like a dog’ and they are madly attempting to optimise it in order to be able to release minimum specs that aren’t going to meet with the ire of their prospective / existing pre-order customers.

Not to glorify drug dealers, or anything- but it would be interesting to be able to craft and sell, uh, regulated substances in the game. Having to run away from guards busting down the door of your “alchemy” lab, risking that a customer is a sting operation..

I don’t know- they are pretty generic, but there’s a weird part of me that really digs the old-school-ness of animated skeletons. It would be interesting if not all skeletons were hostile, though. -Or would that be silly?

Gorgonaut: One thing I’ve missed in games since 1992 (!) is Ultima Underworld’s simple but effective mood system for entities. Examine an enemy and normally they’re hostile, an NPC will probably be friendly, but there were places throughout both games where you might find mellow monsters. Something as simple as this helped to impart a sense of realism to the game world. Never once seen a friendly skeleton in a TES game, for example, outside of quest-specific NPCs. Shame.

Interesting! I was busy running away from a war in 1992, so I’ve never played Ultima Underworld, but it does seem like an ingenious thing to implement. Sometimes, good concepts get lost in time, and really deserve to be maintained, where appropriate.

@gorgonaut: Ultima Underworld was definitely not the first game to do this. Plenty of older RPGs had non-hostile creatures dotted around the game that could even temporarily join your party to help you out in fights.

In fact, even Daggerfall had character skills that would make creatures non-hostile. This was lost over time due to the watering down of the series.

@BenLeng: Thank you. It sort of had to be done.
@ankh: I’m not quite sure what SA is, but as Dozer suggested it was, in fact, the whole Balkan Civil War-thing I was a bit preoccupied with. I did get to play with a Commodore 64 along the way, though!

Are they not doing pre-order bonuses for Steam at all? Nothing has come up yet on the store page. I try to avoid Bethesda ads/hype so I can enjoy a nice hiking/homicide simulator without being too terribly disappointed.

I think you get a charming TF2 hat, like the spiky one worn by the chap on Skyrim’s cover art.

I’ve gone for preordering a physical copy for the sake of getting a map. In my heart I know it’ll be dull like that for Oblivion, rather than hand drawn with hints at interesting places like Morrowind’s. But I can dream.

Thanks to an offer in the bargain bucket a few months ago I got it pretty cheap too.

Sure, but even if it’s a derivation, it now has a different meaning. Also give me one of your “edgy” masterpieces, please. I would say RPGs are by definition “un-edgy”, unless you’re a fan of some obscure, highly abstract Siberian indie project which is in development for 15 years, and it’s better to have a good “generic” fantasy game than a pop fantasy game. Since there haven’t been any of the former in quite a while, it is actually something entirely unique. Also a well-designed game with potentially lots of hand-designed content is better than a strange-looking one which is essentially empty, or has at best only generic copy&paste content, which lets me feel like a real tough guy because it is so dreary and “edgy”.
It’s also not a great feat to recognize that this is primarily an “entertaining” game rather than one with a great concept or great writing. I bet the majority of people ceaselessly repeating this, like they’ve come across a great secret, aren’t even familiar with such things outside of games.

I’m just worried this is going to be an Oblivion. You look at the official screenies of it and think “Holy shit, that looks amazing!” and then when you play it, it looks like someone ate some Crayola crayons and then threw up in a bowl.

at some point I asked myself, why do I keep on riding a horse with metallic shining fur? Quit game deinstall was easy. Strange moral system plus cheesy graphics was too much. Walt Disney Fantasy Bethesda.

Is there a way to make the picture fit into the Web client’s window size in the new image embiggening plug-in? With the current version I have to maximise my Firefox window to view the whole pictures, and there’s no way to scroll(tm) the pictures either. Some of us don’t like maximised windows, especially when reading RPS where the text area is only 600 pixel wide (which is okay, and definitely more readable than very long lines of text). Thank you kindly…

edit: Oh and also we need ways to navigate between picture without opening and closing each one, or it’s just easier to open all pictures in new tabs (which also solves the size problem in most Web programs)

just one last edit: Control-click doesn’t open in new tab, still with Firefox. I’m starting to dislike this picture extension…

Yeah, you should give it a go, though the character interactions are not a big strength of the TES series. TES games are generally relatively easy as RPGs go, mostly because they are so freeform (as you are able to level up at your own pace and run away when things get tough).

You don’t have to wait half an hour between attacks with Skyrim. Combat is as quick or as short as you make it, it depends on your playstyle. The difference in combat between DA/DA2 and Skyrim is… hmm.. probably along the lines of the original Fallout games to the two latest ones. It’s that different.

I don’t think the NPC interactions will be as good, because Bethesda games tend to be much more one sided in that NPCs talk at you rather than you talking to them.

So is that glowy bow as obnoxious in first person view as it looks like it would be? I’m imagining sneaking through a dark dungeon, unable to see anything but the FX from the bow shining swirling around in my face.

(The answer, of course, is it doesn’t matter. The light levels are tweaked so that you can see everything in a “dark” dungeon playing in a brightly-lit living room. You’ll have to wait for mods if you want dark dungeons.)

I get from the screenshots and videos that Bethesda have learned something, and that is to stylise the graphics a bit. Going for proper realism only makes the bits that aren’t particularly realistic look false in comparison, so you’re actually better off putting a bit of, not cartoon, but saturated edge on things to keep it all consistent.

We’re still in the age of baked lighting and pixel shaders. We’re not really at the stage where we can put stuff up on screen that makes us look outside twice. That’s what I’m getting at, anyway.